So how much can one year throw at you? A lot!

I've been off line again--that's twice in one year. This time for an appendix-sized surprise! So much for predictability :)

But now I'm back in business and thought I would share an article that came out but a day and a half before my 'surprise'.

Diane Peters of the Metro News reported on some of the highs and lows of being a Fraud Investigator. (Well, okay, it's about me too!)

Warning to fraudsters everywhere: Watch out
METRO NEWS CANADA - Monday, October 27, 2008
"I’ve got a dead body! I’ve got a dead body!" Jennifer Ford-Smith cried out one day at work.

Her colleagues probably thought she had lost it. But Ford-Smith was used to people not quite getting her passion for sniffing out crime.

The dead body -- found inside a home bought with a mortgage through the lending company she worked for -- meant that the police would get involved with her investigation into the defaulted payments.

As a fraud examiner for a mortgage company, she investigates loans gone awry to see what went wrong (and maybe even get some of the money back) and trains staff to sniff out scams at the application stage.

Ford-Smith’s crime sense started young: She adored math puzzles and mystery books and was able to tell if someone was lying. After studying international relations, she signed on with a temp agency that sent her to a bank’s mortgage division to review applications.

She found one or two frauds a day. She flagged everything from faked government assessments to lies about income. Her colleagues in the same department didn’t find nearly so many questionable applications.....

Continue to the full Metro News article.

Ages ago... (Gosh, a year ago now)... I cam across this article about Caller ID Spoofing. It's a How-To on the legal way to falsely disclose who's calling.

My family jokes that they "passed the test" when I answer the phone.... I'm a real call screener. I like my privacy and I'll take it any way I can get it.

So, as you can imagine, I'm not the only person out there that checks their call display before picking up. With Caller ID spoofing, those calling can disguise themselves with a different number.

Of course, we all get caught off guard and caller ID spoofing only adds to the difficulties in confirming who is truly on the other end of the line. At this point in time, Caller ID Spoofing is legal in Canada.

The article attached details some of the frustrations experienced by hose that have been duped. It poses an interesting dilemma: that of our right to privacy versus our desire to take an ID at face value.

Caller ID 'spoofs' should be illegal
TIMES COLONIST - Thursday, October 23, 2008
Whether used in a dishonest attempt to influence election results or to steal credit card information, "spoofing" should be illegal in Canada. The term sounds harmless, but refers to a dishonest and often sinister practice. Telephone spoofers use technology to disguise their identities when making phone calls. Those receiving the calls, if they have caller ID, are duped. And in Canada, it is completely legal. [...]

But in a future close race, this kind of fraud could be devastating. Imagine calls in the hours before the election, apparently from a candidate, that slandered groups within the riding or urged supporters to vote for someone else.

Telus and the RCMP say nothing can be done. Canadian law allows this kind of fraud.

Continue to the rest of the Times Colonist article.

Technorati Tags: Bank Funny/Food for Thought

For months now (even years), both American and Canadian authorities have been predicting a sharp increase in reported mortgage fraud cases. Up until 3 years ago, few institutions kept track of statistics on this type of fraudulent activity.

For this reason, we often hear Canadian sources quoting FBI statistics on mortgage fraud. The FBI has been tracking and publishing these statistics with increased reliability and transparency in recent publications.

Feds have filed 151 criminal mortgage fraud cases so far this year
DOCU-DRAMA - October 15, 2008, 11:07 PST

"[...] The latest available data from the Justice Department show that for the first ten months of FY 2008, the federal government reported filing 151 criminal mortgage fraud cases. The DOJ has only recently created a category for tracking such cases. Because of natural court delays, however, the government said that only 37 cases of this type were completed in the same ten-month period. In the months to come, TRAC will be providing regular updates on every referral acted upon by each U.S. Attorney’s Office and what the ultimate outcomes are."

There were 69 mortgage-fraud investigations in Florida, made up 46 percent of the total. There were 19 in California, identified as involving cases in central and southern California.

Continue to the rest of the Docu-Drama article.

Of course, a new article came out today detailing the dark side of real estate fraud in Canada. While the information discussed occurs to Canadians, it should be noted that the source of information for the article was a representative of TitlePro. While title insurance is now mandatory by most lenders, many argue that this form of insurance (like many) is a money grab that could be avoided with increased controls within the legal and property registration systems.

Technorati Tags: Investment and Securities Fraud Mortgage Fraud Statistics Bank